Upon finishing Mitten Strings For God by Katrina Kenison, I was reminded of the choices I have made in my life. I chose to leave the corporate world to better serve my family. It was a very hard choice to make but I have been blessed ever since. The generation that I grew up in made no room for motherhood. I was conditioned for the corporate world from a very young age. I had no clue of what motherhood looked like because I had no role models. I am so glad that God got a hold of me and change my life. I have been on a grand adventure ever since....
The following paragraphs are from the book Mitten Strings For God.
We have all been influenced, to some extent, by the pressures of our times: pressure to hire child care and return to work outside the home, pressure to foster ever earlier independence and competence on our children, pressure to own more things, engage in more activities, produce more, and buy more.
In the last 20 years, technology has altered the very rhythm of daily life in our culture. Our cell phones, Palm Pilots, email accounts, and laptops invite us to give up "down" time altogether. We may be so caught up in a cycle of bills and acquisitions, activities and exhaustion, accomplishment and recognition, that we don't even realize we have become the unwitting victims of our own ambitions and desires. We do have choices and it is not too late to change our minds.
Those of us who were groomed for success have learned, from hard won experience, that living life to the fullest does not always mean having and doing as much as possible. Those of us who have experienced corporate life have wondered whether we really want our children to follow in our footsteps. Should we be grooming them to compete in a global marketplace, or encouraging them to march at their own pace? Should we surround them with material goods, or teach them to seek and savor small, authentic joys? We may not have the answers to our questions, yet many of us are ready for something different for ourselves and for our children.
We may have downshifted our careers or found ways to make a more equitable division between work life and family life. We may have decided to make do with less money in order to have more time. We may have experimented with new roles within the family. Or we may have begun to regard our roles as mothers in a new light as a profound journey in its own right and catalyst for inner growth. In any case, our focus has shifted. We have been pulled back to our own hearths, our own families, our own inner lives.
As mothers, we have opportunities each day to cultivate qualities in ourselves and in our children that are all too often neglected in our society: qualities of feeling and imagination, gentleness and compassion, reverence and wonder. As writer Jonathan Kozol has said, "We must invest in their compassionate hearts as well as in their competitive spirits".
When we bring these qualities to the world, we make our own small contributions to humankind, and to the good of all.
We can support one another's choices, whatever they may be. We can be understanding of each other and easier on ourselves. And we can remind ourselves that we do not need to judge our daily lives by how much we accomplish. There is real value in simply being present, for our children. For when we reclaim the realm of motherhood, we also protect and honor the province of childhood.
The following paragraphs are from the book Mitten Strings For God.
We have all been influenced, to some extent, by the pressures of our times: pressure to hire child care and return to work outside the home, pressure to foster ever earlier independence and competence on our children, pressure to own more things, engage in more activities, produce more, and buy more.
In the last 20 years, technology has altered the very rhythm of daily life in our culture. Our cell phones, Palm Pilots, email accounts, and laptops invite us to give up "down" time altogether. We may be so caught up in a cycle of bills and acquisitions, activities and exhaustion, accomplishment and recognition, that we don't even realize we have become the unwitting victims of our own ambitions and desires. We do have choices and it is not too late to change our minds.
Those of us who were groomed for success have learned, from hard won experience, that living life to the fullest does not always mean having and doing as much as possible. Those of us who have experienced corporate life have wondered whether we really want our children to follow in our footsteps. Should we be grooming them to compete in a global marketplace, or encouraging them to march at their own pace? Should we surround them with material goods, or teach them to seek and savor small, authentic joys? We may not have the answers to our questions, yet many of us are ready for something different for ourselves and for our children.
We may have downshifted our careers or found ways to make a more equitable division between work life and family life. We may have decided to make do with less money in order to have more time. We may have experimented with new roles within the family. Or we may have begun to regard our roles as mothers in a new light as a profound journey in its own right and catalyst for inner growth. In any case, our focus has shifted. We have been pulled back to our own hearths, our own families, our own inner lives.
As mothers, we have opportunities each day to cultivate qualities in ourselves and in our children that are all too often neglected in our society: qualities of feeling and imagination, gentleness and compassion, reverence and wonder. As writer Jonathan Kozol has said, "We must invest in their compassionate hearts as well as in their competitive spirits".
When we bring these qualities to the world, we make our own small contributions to humankind, and to the good of all.
We can support one another's choices, whatever they may be. We can be understanding of each other and easier on ourselves. And we can remind ourselves that we do not need to judge our daily lives by how much we accomplish. There is real value in simply being present, for our children. For when we reclaim the realm of motherhood, we also protect and honor the province of childhood.
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